Ouran High School Host Club Series 1 - Part 1   Starring (voice): Ayaka Saito, Daisuke Kirii, Kenichi Suzumura and Mamoru Miyano Manga Entertainment RRP: £19.99 MANG3015 Certificate: 15 Available 20 April 2009

Haruhi Fujioka is a young female high school student who one day crosses paths with the Ouran High School Host Club, a collection of the school's elite males who combine both intelligence and good looks. Together the club hire themselves out for romantic liaisons. When Haruhi breaks a valuable vase, she is forced to join the club to pay off her debt. The problem is, because of her androgynous look, the club think that she is a boy...

Ouran High School Host Club (2006) is a romantic comedy of errors, originally produced as a manga written by Bisco Hatori, the show was adapted as an amine by the BONES studio. The show was directed by Takuya Igarashi and written by Yōji Enokido.

This two disc set covers the first half of Season One and contains thirteen episodes

As one can imagine a girl posing as a male in a club that gets involved in other people's love lives gives rise to a lot of humour derived from mistaken gender issues. So, once the characters are introduced, we have the inevitable story of how the club gets Haruhi past her physical without disclosing her gender, how she ends up kissing a girl, not sure if she liked it, and various combinations of the club trying to help people with their romances.

It’s all a bit sweet and obviously aimed at a young female teen audience. Although the animation is pretty good the overuse of reds and pinks is bound to burn out your retinas - the whole thing looks like moving candyfloss.

Both discs have options for either Japanese or English stereo tracks with optional English subs. I wasn’t really expecting much in the way of extras on what is a light hearted romantic comedy, so was surprised and delighted to discover that no less than three of the seven episodes, on the first disc, come with a full length commentary by the English dub team, a rare treat and tonally they are as light and frothy as the show. Other than this there are no extras on disc one.

Disc two holds the remaining five episodes; it also holds some fair extras. First up is the Manga Pages, which might sound great until you discover that there are only six pages which are hard to read through the mild blur, so that would really be an advert for the manga and not a real extra - shame really as it a great idea to include the original manga. Next up are the Outtakes (15 min, 04 sec) wherein the cast have fun getting their voiceovers wrong and playing with the original script. You also get the opening and closing textless songs and eight trailers for other shows.

So there you have it, thirteen episodes of light romantic comedy. What it does, it does well, just don’t look for any depth or meaning and you should find it quite fun.

6

Charles Packer